Traffic Skills Classes To Resume at LANL

Thanks to some work by Tim George, Bill Mairson, and Laboratory Legal, it looks like I can resume teaching the League of American Bicyclist's Traffic Skills classes on Lab property this spring. This will be for badged folks only. Give a holler or leave a comment after this post if you are interested and I will start to schedule.

Khal

Christmas Week

 

That Trump-Ugly Path That Better Not Be Before Us

Trump, with his fanning the flames of Islamophobia,  may be full of shit, but his message should not be ignored by the public. We've actually gone down that ugly road once before, in the form of FDR's Executive Order 9066, which resulted in Japanese Americans, including native born citizens, spending WW II behind barbed wire through no fault of their own. Having lived in Honolulu for 14 years, maybe I'm just a little sensitive to that subject.

Article: Fading Accounts of Japanese Internment Camps Important to Preserve (Elena Wirth, Santa Fe New Mexican, Aug, 2014).

Over the weekend, we went to Santa Fe to do some shopping and on the way back home, stopped at the memorial to the Japanese-Americans who were forced into a WW II internment camp that was right in The City Different. The memorial is a big white granite block with a bronze plaque embedded in it, located on the hill overlooking the house we bought in Casa Solana. The memorial, shown below, is on the edge of the big dog park, the Frank Ortiz Park.

Santa Fe Internment Camp.
Photo from Wikipedia

 Turns out the Casa Solana development is built on what was a concentration camp. Think about that next time you drive by the neighborhood. I think I need to put up a Zen sculpture or Yorishiro in the yard. Some more info in various places including here and here.

So lest we forget, we've gone down this Trump-ugly road before. Paranoia does strike deep. Let's not let real problems lead to unreal solutions.

 

 

Bullseye shows approximate camp location in this Topographical Map, 1952. Santa Fe, New Mexico. United States Geological Survey. Courtesy of the New Mexico State Library and the National Japanese American Historical Society Digital Archives.

 

 

Strong Towns

 We seek an America where our local communities are designed to grow stronger in the face of adversity, to be the solid foundation on which our shared prosperity is preserved.

--From the Strong Towns Mission Statement

I had not realized that Strong Towns was a membership organization until recently. Once I did so, I joined. I'm not generally a joiner, but the Strong Towns philosophy of sustainability and of putting things like planning, zoning, and transportation into a context of how these contribute to an economically and socially self sustaining community, absent frequent infusions of IOUs, makes perfect sense to me. Indeed, in the context of how Los Alamos has discussed things like the new Smith's Marketplace, economic diversification, a walkable community, and what to do with Trinity Drive, we need to ask how projects, programs, and planning ensure that Los Alamos will persevere, regardless of what the Feds do with the National Laboratory. Having grown up in the heart of the Rust Belt (Buffalo, NY), I know firsthand what happens when the golden goose stops laying eggs.

We need to put some critical thinking into this at a deep enough level. Indeed, Kevin Shepherd of Verdunity, a Dallas based consulting firm and key Strong Towns supporter, gave the keynote at the recent joint APA/ASCE conference in Las Cruces and stressed the Strong Towns approach to truly sustainable communities. So Strong Towns needs to be present as a non-partisan think tank. I suggest you join if you have not considered it. Click up top for the full mission statement and think about it.

Annual Holiday Parade Ride--Dec 5th

From Chris Collord of the Tuff Riders

Hi all,

This year the Tuff Riders will be joining up with the Hooga Yoga bikers to promote biking of all kinds in the Los Alamos Holiday Parade. 

The parade is on Saturday, December 5th at 6:00PM, so we will meet somewhere in the Canyon School parking lot at around 5:45 (just look for all the other bikers).  All are welcome...bring the whole family!  Decorating your bike with lights or signs is highly recommended.  Smiths and Metzgers both sell battery-powered LED christmas lights for very cheap.

And just a reminder that the Tuff Riders Christmas party is December 11th at 6:30pm.

See you then,

Chris

Forming a BUG, i.e., Laboratory Bicycle User's Group

The inaugural meeting of the Laboratory's Bicycle User Group is from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m., Tuesday (Nov. 10) in the conference room of Occupational Medicine at TA-3. The meeting is open to all Laboratory badge holders. The group's mission is to improve bicycling safety and enjoyment at LANL.

Employees can hear adventure bike presentations given by LANL adventure cyclists Matt Hardy of Environment, Safety and Health (ADESH) and Jack Killeen of SOC-Los Alamos. This meeting is sponsored by the Traffic Safety Program in Occupational Safety and Health (OSH) Division and the Traffic Safety Committee.

Questions? Contact Khal Spencer of Actinide Analytical Chemistry (C-AAC) at 665-2418.